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Topic: Added to a stranger's Google+ circle. (Read 4544 times)

I signed up for Google+ on a whim one day this past summer when I received an automated message from Google pointing out that two people from my contacts list had joined. I put them in a "circle" and later put several relatives in another "circle".

That is all I have ever done with Google+. It seems pointless to me!

Here's my two part question:

1.) In the past few weeks I have received two notifications that other people have added me to their circles - but these are people I do not know. The most recent case is a name I am certain I have never heard of, and the tiny profile picture shows a woman's face I have never seen.

I have made the choice to simply do nothing, since I do not know this woman and since she does not appear to have any contacts in common with me.

Is that what other people would do?

2.) About a month ago another woman whose name I do not recognize added me to her circle. In that case, though, the message indicated that she and I had one contact person in common, a woman "Wendy" whom I had worked with in the past.

I sent Wendy an e-mail asking her who the woman on Google+ was. Turned out that Wendy hadn't recognized the woman's name, either, but Wendy had gone ahead and added her to Wendy's circle anyway. Wendy told me that she had wondered if maybe the unknown woman may have been one of our clients at the nonprofit organization where we used to work together, but Wendy just couldn't remember for sure.

Well, I was happy to work with our clients during the workday while I worked there, but I think having social contact with former clients several years later is probably not wise, so I have just ignored that notice, too. (But, I'll admit that I wonder if maybe this person could have been someone we met briefly at a conference or something like that, instead of a former client.)

I also signed up for google+ but rarely use it. Same with Pinterest. And Twitter. And I get notifications that strangers have added me to a circle or followed me all the time. I just don't add them back. They'll find out soon enough that I am very boring to follow.

I decline or ignore requests from LinkedIn and Facebook unless I know the person.

I blocked notifications from Google+ because I was always being added to people's circles. I haven't used the dang thing in years.

I also ignore notifications from AO3, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn that people are following me. I've got enough people I'm following/friends with. LinkedIn was only created when I was in college as part of a class (it wasn't required, but was strongly encouraged) and I haven't touched it again. FB is locked down tight enough that you can't find me unless your a friend of a friend, and I don't accept very many friend requests at all. Anything else, you're welcome to follow me until you realize how boring I am, then unfollow at will. I will probably not reciprocate.

I've mentioned this before - but I graduated from a high school with a very common name - we'll call it "Hillside High". There are schools named "Hillside High" across the USA (probably in Canada and the UK as well).

I get all kinds of people who graduated from "Hillside High" in the correct year (or a span of a couple of years to either side) contacting me. But their profile will reveal that they went to "Hillside High" in another state. But they will still insist that they remember me from high school. Never mind that I never lived in 46 of the 50 states in the USA and only went to school (including college) in two of them - someone with a name similar to my married name went to THEIR Hillside High and it must have been me.

I've avoided Google+ circles to avoid being added to a new list of "but you LOOK just like her" and people insisting that *I* should remember them from "good old Hillside High".

I've decided that the "point" of Google+ circles is for 5 people to feel like they have a billion contacts or "friends" and for the rest of us to ignore them.

I have one old friend who actually followed through on a threat to ignore Facebook in favor of G+, the chief consequence being losing touch with our social circle that planned gatherings on Facebook. But she's a happier person now, so who am I to tell her what I think she's missing?

short answer: feel free to ignore. It's not like it makes them your real-life friends!

I, too, get "add me" from strangers and ignore them. The only people who have given me any drama about not adding them to any or all of the various social medias are people I try to avoid in real life, too. And I don't feel rude when I tell them "I'm sorry--I only add a very few people." If they press, I just repeat until they either stop or start to look like fools and then it's their problem.